


death, and his friends

by cellardweller



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Fluff, Father Figures, Hurt feelings, M/M, Pre-Death Rising, Reconciliation, Redemption, Sensuality, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27486031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellardweller/pseuds/cellardweller
Summary: Darion Mograine's big day out.
Relationships: Darion Mograine & Bolvar Fordragon, Darion Mograine & Maxwell Tyrosus, Darion Mograine/Thoras Trollbane
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Thoras, Chariot

**Author's Note:**

> *slaps the top of this fic* I can fit so many headcanons into this bad boy
> 
> started writing this thing like three months ago rip, I wanted it done by death rising but now it will come before and after, oh well. 
> 
> a little canon divergence, what if darion got nice things, also it's comic book darion in this house. I do give @nighthaunting all the credit for turning me onto darion and thoras, so enjoy that. I take a lot of liberties in here, but I do hope you, reader, like it. 
> 
> find me on twitter @arealgoldmouth if you want to yell with me about literally anything but esp death knights thank you, goodnight

It must be known that a young man burdened with sorrow and lacking in mindless bloodthirst should be in want of tenderness, or some shelter of some kind from the casual coldness of the world -- regardless of how unspoken that want is.  
  
That is what Trollbane said to him one night on the upper deck of Acherus, where they would stand together and stare into the endless black of night in companionable silence -- with increasing frequency. He said it carelessly, as though it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, but for a man who so carefully aims every word that comes out of his mouth, it almost reads as an insult. And it startled Darion so badly that he said nothing, but waited until the old King of Stromgarde had stepped away before turning to watch him disappear into the depths of Acherus once again.   
  
At the time, it was confusing in the way that Darion struggled to decide if Trollbane had been discussing himself, or perhaps advising Darion to find a wife. Both seemed equally as likely -- for all his stoicism, Trollbane had become surprisingly forthcoming in the weeks following his resurrection, as open to share as he is to learn. He had also become virtually unafraid in offering unsolicited guidance to anyone he came into contact with, his words often brusque but appropriate, forcing his victim to consider something about themselves they hadn’t before-   
  
“Oh,” Darion had said, leaning back against the black iron bars of the deck, tapping a finger against his lips. He considered the shared spaces that Trollbane demanded of him occasionally, even when neither of their tasks insisted upon it, the way his hands fall easily on Darion’s arm or shoulder, and how Darion flinches away from none of it.   
  
To describe his relationship with Trollbane would be thus: Darion conspires to find ways to be in his company and topics to keep his interest, usually without realizing it.   
  
And that seems so long ago.  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
“My presence has been requested in the highlands,” Thoras says, the breath driving his words ghosting over Darion’s skin.   
  
Their spell is broken for the moment, and Darion looks at him, his eyebrows drawn together. “By who? Not me,” he says.   
  
“No,” Thoras says, leaning down to kiss him suddenly and roughly, enough to split the skin of his lip. He breaks away and speaks quietly, pressing their foreheads together. “The Silver Hand.”   
  
The spell drifts away even more from him, just out of his reach. The furs of his bed cling to his skin and the din of knights training drift through the halls loud enough and constant enough to be an everlasting characteristic of his private room. A gust of rain patters against the small window of his quarters, and the flow of frost magic from Thoras crawls over his body, soothing the discomfort of the blight that simmers under his skin. The iron grip that Thoras has on his jaw, firm and secure, remains. “What for?” he demands. He can only move his head a bit, only as much as Thoras allows, and he allows him to look at him.   
  
Thoras shifts, pushing a thigh between his legs, pressing their bodies ever closer together on Darion’s strictly utilitarian bed. Before this conversation, such a thing was exactly what he needed, but now with the heat of his sudden frustration and the bombardment of new stimuli, it feels nearly suffocating. “To escort some refugees into Stromgarde. After we clear it out, of course. It seems that following the death of my wayward son, every roach in Arathi has come crawling to make it home.” Thoras’ eyes move over Darion’s face like he’s looking for cracks.   
  
“Do you spite us for that?” Darion asks, and he’s not certain why -- there’s vulnerability in his tone that he hadn’t expected.   
  
Thoras smiles, a slight pull to the corner of his mouth. “Absolutely not,” he says. “Only that I wasn’t able to do it myself.” His grip on Darion remains, but his thumb gently pushes into the gray skin of his face, swept across the line of his jaw, reverently so. “Regardless of all that, who better to address the situation at Stromgarde than its… former king.”   
  
When he looks at Thoras, he sees a different man from the one who was pulled from the crypt -- his eyes blazing with lichfire, his white hair shorn down at the sides like some old winter soldier, yet he moves with tenacity, with newfound purpose. Who would Darion be, to try to deny him anything?   
  
“The Silver Hand doesn’t care for us very much,” Darion says. His own hands are free, roaming old scars, settling a loose grasp on Thoras’ wrist, the other clinging to the small of his back, pulling him close enough to grind somewhat on the thigh between his legs -- moving on, already distracted.   
  
Thoras takes the hint. “No they do not,” he says pointedly, and shifts again, to lie atop the Highlord. He takes his hand from Darion’s jaw and moves it to his flank, thumb grazing the ragged edge of his death wound, and the other he buries in white-blonde hair, tugging it at the roots. Darion lets the other knight pull his head back, his hands a vice-grip on Thoras’ arms, with a hiss, and sighs when the old king bites at neck, chasing each mark with a gentle swipe of his tongue. “But it seems they can appreciate the need for the delicate touch of a warrior, every now and again,” Thoras says low, and Darion feels a caress down the length of his death wound, eliciting a reaction from him much stronger than he expected.   
  
“I can relate,” Darion says, shuddering. Thoras moves again, softening all of the places where his hands meet Darion’s body, offering remarkable gentleness in place of exhilarating control. Their hips grind together with deep, long strokes. He takes Darion’s face in his hands and kisses him so deeply, so long, that Darion thinks if he had any need to breathe he would have drowned in him by now.   
  
“So I have your blessing? I leave in the morning,” Thoras asks him when they break apart again, stuttering a bit on a downward stroke, breaking off with a groan. He has always been the one more taken to superfluous breathing between the two of them and all their trysts, and the ease at which he sounds like a living thing in bliss encourages Darion to try and voice his own thoughts more often.   
  
Darion huffs a laugh. “My blessing,” he says. “Of course, as though you need it." Dry, if only because Thoras still has hands on him, all of his strength poured into every heave, holding the fourth horseman down in a steadying embrace.  
  
"Not necessity that begs the blessing, my dear." Their movements grow more desperate, and when finally Thoras rises, propped up by his elbows on either side of Darion's head, he does so with one deep breath let loose as a frustrated sigh. Darion eyes the rise and fall of his broad chest somewhat impassively, with a beat of sympathy -- he's content with this lot, as satisfied by all of their peripheral eroticism as he would be getting bent over his desk, but Thoras is haunted by all of his more traditional experience.   
  
Everyone gets used to it eventually -- all that death takes away from their bodies.   
  
"We could summon Lord Thorval," Darion suggests, still proverbially light-headed, preoccupied by all the spots on his body that still have the ghost of sensation, just enough, and Thoras expertly pressing on all of them for hours. He could teach the newer death knight how to appreciate them himself, but it never takes in a single night.   
  
To that, Thoras scoffs. "I need not suffer that kind of indignity before a mission, especially not from that gossip monger." Darion could tell him that he worries for nothing, but he rather enjoys hearing his unfiltered thoughts. Instead, when he finally topples down onto his side in defeat, Darion moves his hands over Thoras' temples and pushes his head back. Once revealed, Darion lavishes gentle bites and long strokes of his tongue to his death wound -- the ring of pale flesh on his neck, from the sharp garrote that took his life in bloody rapture all those years ago. A good story, in Darion's opinion, as he works on the old king until he's restless beneath him. "I was about to ask," Thoras says lowly, "if it ever gets any easier. It seems you observe as well as you receive."   
  
To that, Darion gives him a grimace. "You could say that," he says. "It has to be harder for you, I presume." He pushes himself up until they're eye to eye. "I died young," he continues casually, "and you had nearly a lifetime of exploits, if the stories are true. And the son besides."  
  
"And just look at all the good that does me now." Thoras presses his lips together and eyes Darion, scrutinizing him in some way that makes him think he's insulted him, but then his expression falls back to neutral, unreadable. "Exploits aside, none of them with you," he says.   
  
And true, where history had obviously isolated them, death has leveled them. But the pointedness with which he states it throws Darion once again. Instead of responding, he lowers himself to lie beside Thoras and pulls him into a kiss.   
  
In the absence of blood magic, they would lie entwined for hours, as close as possible and kissing like young lovers. And if King Thoras never returns to his own chamber at all that night, not a soul in Acherus would notice.   
  
An hour or so before sunrise, Thoras has been lulled into a meditative state, not quite sleeping but certainly not awake, his chest rising and falling with old habits not yet dead. Darion traces an old scar on his chest and stares unblinking at the patch of light growing lighter on the floor of his quarters. Acherus can boast very few windows, but one of them belongs to him. He does not sleep very often, and the rest of his waking hours usually don’t conform to a natural cycle, but sometimes when he works at his desk into the morning the light falls over his shoulder, muted from the grime on the window, and felfire green.   
  
Dust motes float through the shaft of morning light and Darion shakes Thoras fully awake gently, rising to sit up against the wall next to his bed and to drape his legs over the warrior. “Thoras,” he says curiously. “I would like to run something by you -- an idea I’ve had.”   
  
The king wakes almost instantly, the movements of his breathing halted the moment he’s cognizant. “What kind of idea?” he asks.   
  
“A reckless one -- sentimental,” he says, moving his gaze from the middlespace to Thoras and his serene expression, but the flare of his eyes belies his sudden interest. Thoras, though he doesn’t cling to his past in detriment, is utterly sentimental -- he takes every opportunity to stoke the embers of his subdued emotions to their fullest potential, a raging firestorm. The small and the grand gestures never go unnoticed.   
  
Thoras smiles and stares up at him -- lichfire glowing in the pre-dawn light. He worries at his lip with his teeth and tucks his arms behind his head. "Tell me," he says eagerly.   
  
And Darion obliges.   
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
Darion sees the other horseman off once the sun has risen, standing with him on the upper deck among the skeletal gryphons who restlessly paw at the ground. Not ones for public displays of affection - more out of their own mutual preference than any notion of propriety, - they linger by the railing at one another’s side, looking out to the mountain range beyond Suramar in silence. The shafts of light that fall between the peaks disperse through the morning fog and miasma in hues of deep gold. It’s most likely breathtaking, but their idea of beauty has changed, so neither one of them offers any flowery comment. Instead, Darion peers over the edge of the railing to see if the land below has gotten any less disgusting. Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t.   
  
Thoras ducks his head down close to Darion’s to speak, just loud enough for only his ears. “I wish you the greatest fortune on your mission, Darion.” His voice is strong, with its haunting reverberation low enough to feel like a rumble against his ear. “However, should you have miscalculated and are to meet a very divine end in the plaguelands, I may assume control of a sizeable enough army to swiftly purge Lordaeron of all the holy knights that still remain.”   
  
With a sidelong glance, Darion tuts. “Keep the peace, Thoras, as well as you can.”   
  
“No promises,” Thoras says as he edges away from Darion and to his mount, now fully fitted for the trip ahead and its reins in the ever-awaiting hands of Commander Thalanor, soured from the early morning and his general disposition.   
  
“This one has the temperament for portals, my lord, but still -- be cautious,” Thalanor says, and drops the reins in the hand of the old king before bowing and walking away, never quite one for prolonged conversation.   
  
Thoras swings himself up into the saddle of the gryphon, settling into the hard edges of its bony frame. He tilts his head to Darion in genuine respect, sweeping a hand out toward Dalaran. “With your leave, highlord.”   
  
Darion sweeps his hand out toward Dalaran in return, teasing. “Suffer well, Thoras,” he says warmly. Thoras smiles wide and kicks off with the gryphon, and Darion watches him until he disappears on the horizon of the floating city and the light of the morning sun. With a groan, Darion starts his descent back into Acherus, an echo of _no promises_ playing on a loop in his head.   
  
It doesn’t take long for restless boredom to set in -- he’s become something of a homebody, though that isn’t to say that it satisfies. There are so few places to which he cares to go rather than tend to the knights. Part responsibility and part distress, he’s become shy at the prospect of entertaining the world as he had before his second death. As a teenager, he’s heard the advice that he should keep busy when morose - and there is plenty to do within Acherus, at a distance, following his leads from Draenor - and it has done nothing but allow room for shame to grow.   
  
Occasionally, he looks at his reflection in a small pocket mirror, considering the young, ugly face that stares back, unable to smile in a natural way. This reckless defiance to being idle doesn’t suit him -- it’s always the lull between the great disasters that befall Azeroth that make him itch.  
  
The Legion was an awakening.   
  
The horsemen commanded an impressive outfit to the sweltering inland of the Broken Shore, beset on all sides by heroes and hellhounds. Nazgrim was right at home, much to Darion’s subdued pleasure, and he took spearhead of their forces, cleaving wide arcs into hordes upon hordes of demons. Sally worked alongside him, her spellcasting as potent in undeath as it was ever in life, and her avoidance of Darion steadfast.  
  
He and Thoras - a subject his thoughts often drift back to these days - strengthened their bond by throwing themselves at every big bastard on the burning island. Darion recalls throwing his hand out over quickly-crumbling earth and geysers of fel bile, grabbing at Thoras desperately before he fell away with the rest of a disintegrating cliff, severing itself from the better part of a plateau. When he rested his hand against his chest to steady him, it rose and fell with futile breath.  
  
Despite the honor and glory of it all, the looks on his knights’ faces were often reticent and uncertain -- they were used to the cold, dark terror of the Scourge. Having spent so long being an outsider, Darion honestly forgot there could still be places yet outside of that. What pride he may have felt at the Ebon Blade’s contribution against the Burning Legion was tempered by the champions who descended into the tomb, who went to Argus and confronted the burning throne and all of its horrors -- and who never came back. What grander fates could have awaited them, he tries not to dwell on. And what mild salve it is, to know they are far from the only ones to have lost champions. 

Something else bothered him as well, a yet unturned stone. Thassarian saw the look on his face one day on the Shore as he considered a bubbling pool of liquid fire, and laughed. “I had the same thought, I would wager you anything,” he said, as Darion only slightly angled his face toward his voice, eyes lost in the vibrant green. “Two ways to ensure a death knight remains dead: Fordragon - on a bad day - and whatever the hell that is,” he says, pointing at the fel fire. Darion couldn’t find a reason to disagree, though he instantly recalled an addendum once uttered by Koltira, who said that a particularly dedicated hawkstrider could ‘get the job done’ and Darion had no response for that either.   
  
Feeling extraordinarily uptight, Darion kept to Acherus once the Legion problem had been solved. He’s been content to usher in every new knight from atop the citadel, and take in stories from his champions besides. Tales of Zandalar and Silithus, and what he hears of Kul Tiras ignites the part of his memory lit by warm fires in the hearth and the low rumble of his father’s voice -- though according to his knights, childhood tales of Boralus could not possibly do justice to the real thing. Many of them try to urge him out with such overt suggestions, but the land of the living is not a place for him, at least for the moment.   
  
So he warmly retreats from the notion, and offers his champions aid in what ways the horsemen can, but as leaders they have to refuse to personally take any hard stances in the living’s faction war -- which he prefers. With that restriction, Darion lingers in the hold and waits for the world to need their help. Thoras has become a consistent and welcomed respite from the drudgery of existing, but an old grief has made a harbor of his daily routine.   
  
He knows the hunger for redemption, and he knows where to find it. And the old Stromgarde king has bestowed his own blessing on him, more or less. Darion drops the front legs of his chair from where he’d been distractedly lounging back in it, and leans over to write a note.   
  
Ten minutes later, the arcane motes from Stormwind’s portal dust the Acherus balcony, and a note sits on the war table:  _ Back soon. -D  _


	2. Tyrosus, Hierophant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the waters under the burning bridge

There are very few things that bring Darion any gratification - any little spark of lingering humanity - anymore, and one of those things has left for a mission for an undetermined amount of time.   
  
Another is the thunder of hooves beneath him, the rush of air against his face -- if he concentrates, he can recall the sensation of rolling muscle between his thighs, the warmth and sweat and bone-deep ache after riding hard.   
  
When he swings off the saddle and lands on his feet, he almost expects the numb shaking of his legs. And yet, like so many other things, it never comes. Iydallus nudges at his chest when he stills, staring ahead at the imperious silhouette of Light’s Hope, the peak of the chapel striking the fading blue of the late sunrise. This isn’t the first time he’s looked upon that distant sanctuary and saw only death before him.   
  
Iydallus nudges him again, and he takes the moment of solitude to run his hands along her long, sharp jaw and the blackened, hard flesh of her neck, stroking his fingers under the lip of her armored face. Just like them, she breathes only to make sound, only when she cares to do so -- and she cares only to do so when he pets her gently like a living thing. Her chest heaves and rattled with disuse, drawing in a great breath -- and she unceremoniously snorts in his face. Darion laughs like a dry cough.  
  
When he tears open a portal into the realm of shadows, Salanar waits just beyond, staring at Darion through the rift. He tilts his chin up as their eyes meet. “When will you return for her?” he asks.   
  
Darion urges the mare through the rift, and she goes slowly but confidently to Salanar. They have always been friends, the two of them. “I may not,” he says in return, quiet and clipped. Salanar has his typical response to cryptic threats -- he nods and says nothing else on the matter. Darion knows: Salanar cares, in his own way.   
  
“Suffer well,” the horseman says. The portal closes in a blink and Darion finds himself not quite stranded, but well enough alone. The sickly heat of the plaguelands bears down on him, the distant undead groaning a song he knows well. Desiccated hounds eye him from a distance, and though a part of him will always scorn being recognized as something familiar to them, he can’t help but be grateful that they don’t bother him.   
  
He walks unarmed, as unarmed as he can be.   
  
And there’s an artistry to approaching the living, he’s learned. Even with no visible weapons, he walks slowly, watching the white stone of the chapel become brighter through the fog so slowly, agonizingly. And then, he knows he’s come into their view as a dozen voices cry out in warning -- to him, to each other.   
  
He reaches the gates as they’re still yelling, as though one death knight could do much against what feels like hundreds of paladins, hunkered down beneath the tombs of heroes, sanctified on holy ground. Under his mask he scoffs, but chews on his lip. His hands are clenched so tight, he can feel the bite of his nails through the leather of his gloves. The holiness of this place feels like a breath of fire against his skin, a crawling sensation that turns to prickling, that he fears may turn to biting if he ventures too close. But he stops just outside the threshold, eyeing the blades that the guardians draw upon him.   
  
Darion’s always been uncertain of himself in standoffs, like not knowing where to put his hands. When they say nothing to him, but edge closer with their blades in righteous silence, he sighs. “I request an audience with Lord Tyrosus,” he says, raising his hands up. “And… I will not leave until I speak with him.”   
  
The guardians lower their swords almost imperceptibly and look at each other. One looks back. “You’re…  _ him _ , are you not?”   
  
“I suppose,” he says. He could be, he could not. There are a lot of  _ him _ s in the world. Here, now, he probably is. Darion drops his arms to his side, and waits. He knows that as stalwart as paladins are, they’re also deeply curious. Tyrosus will come, and what happens will happen, swiftly.   
  
It doesn’t take long -- Darion suspects that as Tyrosus grows older, he will occupy the chapel for longer periods of time. Of course he’s here on this day, when Darion comes calling.   
  
And he looks resplendent, electrifyingly virtuous -- so much more terrifying than Darion remembers him. In his presence, every time, he feels small. The only time he felt bigger than Tyrosus was when he held him by the neck three feet off of the ground, with power from the grave and the lord’s own holy magic nullified -- and not easily. Saying that this man poses an immediate threat to him is an understatement, especially if his gambit goes sideways. Darion stills, waiting.   
  
His strides are long, heavy in the dirt, and he only stops for a moment to stare at their guest and confirm the identity - through the rogue mask, even - before advancing on Darion with a fury reminiscent of his own father. When Tyrosus stops, the anger pours forth from him like a kiln. The death knight can do nothing but bask in it. For a moment, he thinks he feels his heart beat.   
  
“Darion,” Tyrosus says. If Darion wasn’t so used to people who once loved him spitting his name like a curse, he might be- hurt, he thinks.   
  
“That’s right,” he says. Tyrosus glares at him with one eye.   
  
“Why have you come back here. Have you not done enough?”   
  
One could argue that he’s done more than enough, but he chooses not to die on that mountain every day of his life. “I want to speak, alone,” he says.   
  
Tyrosus stands his ground, and gestures to all of the three feet between them and his retainers. “Then speak.”   
  
Darion fights the urge to clench his hands. “Privately,” he says through his teeth. “I have come unarmed.”   
  
“You and I both know the damage you can do without a sword, Darion.”   
  
“Still less than with a sword,” he says.  
  
The paladin crosses his arms, visibly tensing up under the armor. He looks over his shoulder to the guards and the chapel grounds beyond, then to the distance beyond Darion, to the treeline and horizon. “You will be silenced,” he concedes.   
  
Darion admits to himself that despite all of his years of grief, it hurts to be spoken to in this way by this man. It would hurt more, perhaps, if he hadn’t earned it. He wonders if the next time he’s driven to blasphemy, will they even be bothered to tell him he’s acting below himself, that such malevolence is not  _ him?  _ Would they be wrong to do so?  
  
A bell tolls close by -- atop the chapel. Darion comes back to the present to the impatient, wary tilt of Tyrosus’ head, eyeing him with a pinch between his brows. He’s always looked vaguely angry, even when they were close. “Fine,” he says.   
  
It takes only a moment for a paladin like Tyrosus to cast suppression, especially at a target who drops his guard down without hesitation.   
  
A blinding light drives Darion down into the dirt -- something tells him that Tyrosus could have held back, but chose not to. Begrudgingly, Darion has to admire it. There’s a part of him that believes that the more he endures, the less his nature will turn to anxious fury. In the red dirt outside of Light’s Hope, his hands curl and scrape up the dried topsoil, and it feels less righteous here, more demeaning - especially once he notices no one moves, but they watch him - but humiliation is less poisonous after death and undeath and death again. Tyrosus stares down at him, as though daring him to become angry.   
  
It’s a feeling like being stripped away, like being overtaken by cold water, the oppressive heat of summer in the highlands of Lordaeron, all at once -- the closest he’s gotten to feeling human, and it comes from the burning misery of the Light. Typical.   
  
He stands unsteadily and unaided, pressing a hand against his temple. A bone-deep ache thunders through him, the dark magic that works to keep his body functional suppressed to the point of sluggish pain. He says nothing to Tyrosus’ inquisitive glare, but gestures weakly to the interior of the chapel grounds.   
  
The paladin leads him past the threshold without looking back, and takes the path through their small market. Enough people have heard the commotion by now, and gather around to glower at him as they pass by. No one says anything above a whisper, or makes any move toward him, so he considers it a small victory.   
  
He grounds himself as they enter the cemetery behind the chapel. Even silenced, he can sense the dead beneath his feet. He thinks of his father - where he might have been buried if Darion had been able to retrieve his body from Naxxramas - and then he stops.   
  
“We speak in the crypt,” Tyrosus says. He has his back turned to Darion, and doesn’t move. “Or you leave,” he adds, after a beat of silence. There’s an overwhelming feeling that the death knight is meant to go first in the spirit of avoiding an ambush, so he moves around Tyrosus and takes the steps heavily. There’s a weight to him like he’s dragging chains.  
  
The push and pull of the dead here -- similar, but calmer. Colder, longer dead. It takes everything in him not to try and reach back. Trapped between them, and the lash of the silencing spell in a crypt. It’s unnerving, but appreciated -- he can’t imagine a scenario in which he’s ever within spitting distance of Lady Liadrin again.   
  
Darion pushes his boot down into the packed dirt and looks over the statue at the back of the room, surrounded by lit candles, the features of its face weathered down by time. It’s a stark contrast to the marble Fordring that stands outside -- polished and cared for, new and a little hard to think about. He pushes his hood to his shoulders and pulls down the covering on his face to his neck, and runs his hand through his hair, if for nothing more than to ease his anxiety.  
  
Tyrosus clears his throat from behind him. It seems he’s gotten too comfortable in the moment. “What are you doing back here, Darion?” he asks.  
  
“I came to ask for a favor,” Darion says. He chances on the blatant lack of respect in having his back turned while speaking to hide the expression on his face.  
  
And to avoid the look on Tyrosus’, who instantly bristles in a way that makes his skin crawl. “A favor,” he repeats, low and angry. “After what your order attempted here, on holy ground?”   
  
“What  _ I  _ attempted,” Darion corrects him. And then, he turns. “But we’ve proven ourselves. If not to you and the Silver Hand, to Azeroth and its people. We’ve helped to save this world, just as you have, Maxwell.”   
  
“ _ Lord Tyrosus. _ ”   
  
Darion nods in concession. They are not friends anymore, and it’s beneath Darion’s aptitude to assume their shared history should engender forgiveness. He may not name him again, however.   
  
“What is this about?”  
  
He thinks for a moment, on the best way to ask, and tries to avoid all avenues which lead to groveling. Nothing comes up better than the direct approach. He grounds himself again, reaching down lightly to graze the edge of the echoes that reside under them, to graze the reprimanding edge of the suppression spell without triggering it. More powerful than he’s ever considered himself -- he can muster the courage to do this.   
  
“I have come for the Ashbringer.”  
  
The paladin gives him a lopsided glare, staring in silence for a long moment until he huffs a laugh and bends at the shoulders, as though weighed down by what looks like utter disbelief. Darion waits, chewing on his upper lip.   
  
“Is that why you’ve come  _ unarmed,  _ Darion?” His tone is instantly much more mocking than Darion expected, and the death knight takes a step back. “To make room for another pilfered artifact? Then you’ve made a grave mistake in coming here.”   
  
That could mean so many things, and Darion decides that clarification would just add to their tension. “It was my father’s sword, and it was mine before Tirion claimed it.”   
  
“And your attempted sacrilege upon his soul is precisely the reason why it will remain with us. What kind of justice could you possibly hope to bring to it?” Tyrosus descends the final few steps onto the floor of the crypt, the small fires from the sconces on the wall throwing his sharp, disappointed expression into focus.   
  
Darion thinks of the monastery, back when he was alive, and of the scarlet silk and blood paving his way into the interior of the cathedral, and of his brother, and of his shame in being the weapon of a tortured soul’s vengeance. He could do no worse justice than that. Or Renault’s betrayal, driving the sword through their father -- he could do no worse justice than that either.   
  
“I could do no worse than throwing myself upon it,” Darion says quietly, an afterthought of his current stream of memories. When he looks up, Tyrosus has the decency to look mildly upset. “The Ashbringer is my birthright,” he continues, stronger, “and you let it sit in your halls unused, but as another keepsake of your righteousness.”   
  
“Better a keepsake than an instrument of death to the living,” Tyrosus says, “Can you even hold lightbound weapons, Darion? Or do you burn up like the rest of the undead.”  
  
Ignorance on the Lord’s part to assume the Ashbringer is a holy weapon, or that it would remain holy in Darion’s hands. Very few things do. It takes a fantastic amount of restraint not to rise to the bait. Darion inhales, feels the papery stretch of his lungs, to expel it in a great sigh. “Tirion would… not have opposed of it being returned to me,” he says, “eventually.” A bold statement, but neither of them can deny that the Highlords had grown close over the years. The many, many years.   
  
Still, Tyrosus puffs up in defense, yet he doesn’t outright refuse Darion the privilege of being someone the late Highlord might have considered like a son. A wayward, unfortunate son. “Then why were you not the one he passed it on to?”   
  
Why, indeed. Darion chews on his own tongue. “Because I was never granted the divine knowledge of where he died. Had I known, I would’ve gone myself,” he says quietly. Despite himself, he goes on. Like a laundry list of all the small insults he feels dealt upon him since the Broken Shore. “I was not invited to any ceremony of his passing, and I was then forced to try and raise him into undeath.”   
  
Tyrosus balks, once again so instantly angry, like a flint struck to flame. “Forced-”  
  
“We both know what it is like to be at the mercy of something much, much stronger than us.” Darion cuts him off quickly, and his gaze moves from somewhere in the middle region of the paladin’s chest to his eye. For a moment, Tyrosus looks concerned. The oscillation of his emotions seem like nothing if not frighteningly genuine.   
  
“Darion, you have assaulted these lands and this chapel and its people twice, now.” His voice lowers as he takes the last step onto the hallowed ground of the crypt. “Why would the Light allow you to wield one of its greatest weapons?”   
  
“I have also died on these lands, twice - by the Light,” Darion says, already burying the paltry grief that rises to the surface. “I have no reason to believe there is still a sliver of a chance that I might be allowed to reclaim my father’s sword. However, my request is we let the Light decide.”   
  
Tyrosus stares, the slight downward of his mouth the only indication that he’s still upset -- his shoulders bow, like they did when Darion and his brother would argue in the common room among the Silver Hand. His only victory over this man is his frozen youth and a dozen slaughtered paladins -- perhaps his most bitter victory yet. Should fate favor him this afternoon, he could add the Ashbringer to that tally. He slowly closes his hands into fists, the thought too captivating to bear. “Please,” Darion says.   
  
The paladin heaves a great sigh and turns to ascend back to the surface. Honestly, Darion expected much more of a fight, though he has not much left in him. It might be the same, with Tyrosus.   
  
“Darion, if you are not in this crypt when I return…” and the sentence hangs, some old domestic threat. It says something, that he would choose simply to menace him into staying put rather than imprisoning him within shackles of holy fire.  
  
No one comes down -- no one and nothing to guard him. The wind comes through the open staircase like a howl, and Darion runs his hands through his hair once more, taken by anxious energy. And a bit by self-pity. How much of his own gradual exoneration has he been granted by the grace of others, and how much of it has he seized from the strands of fate itself? Had he stormed the chapel catacombs once more with the fury of a lost son and taken the sword by force, would that make him feel any better?   
  
A lifetime ago, when discussing the formation of the Argent Dawn, the adults around him argued day and night about the virtues of the outstretched hand. Tyrosus included. Darion slowly paces the small space, arms folded.

///   
  


Tyrosus returns an hour later, the sword bundled inconspicuously to a surprisingly passable degree, and tied to the holster on his back. Darion sits at the base of the forgotten hero’s statue, his head against the cold stone. When the paladin steps down to the first, he clears his throat.   
  
“I don’t know what madness has its hold on me, for me to trust you with this,” Tyrosus says, hauling the sword from his back to hold it out in both hands. Darion stands, careful not to seem too eager as he reaches out- “The young man who I knew, who was worthy of this blade, died long ago.”   
  
Darion freezes, his hands a breath away from the golden fabric. Tyrosus stands with his head bowed slightly, his eye shut, ignorant to the way the death knight stops and struggles not to be hurt. Too late, as the awkward silence has stretched along, and Darion takes the sword in his arms with a delicate touch. “As you say.”   
  
It’s not that Tyrosus has it wrong, but to hear it said out loud is akin to an echo of all the doubts harbored in the back of his own mind, in the hesitant, murmured confessions of his knights. Arthas’ death washed ashore all of their suppressed emotion - covered but not killed - for so many years. Darion will not entertain the idea that he doesn’t deserve scorn, but-   
  
“I will give you privacy,” Tyrosus says, breaking his rumination, a marginally shamed look on his face, “but I will be close.”   
  
He leaves swiftly, and Darion says nothing. Standing still among the dead, the heat of the Ashbringer warming his chest through the thick cloth, the death knight could be like these statues of the long since living, if he never moved again. There’s a low hum from the sword, like a lullaby, so close to his death wound.   
  
With extraordinary care he places it on the ground, and kneels, and slowly unwraps the cloth from end to end. The light runs over the cloth like water, soaking into the ground, nearly blinding. Reverently, his hands hover over the disc near the point of the blade, flattened from a stolen orb spilling over with warlock’s dark magic and ever anchored to Ashbringer by the formidable power of his father’s righteousness. The testament to the strength of this blade, that Alexandros was unmade and made again with the bare touch of his hands, unafraid.   
  
Darion pauses, lifting his hands from the glow of the Ashbringer and putting them in his lap. Fear of the unknown has never been his driving force. Confidence that if he fell, he would rise again -- certainly. This blade has killed him once already.   
  
Slowly, he pulls off his gloves and sets them on the ground. He cannot ask Ashbringer to accept him if he’s not willing to expose himself to it. There remains a little fear that the blade won’t recognize him -- not as Darion Mograine, not as the son of Alexandros, not as the death knight who tore through armies with it in hand, and then held it alone at night, and in the quiet moments. There’s the little fear, and there’s the absolution of the other possibility.   
  
“Hello, again,” he says, the affection grating to his ears.   
  
When he lays his hands down upon it, runs them over the runes and the edge, Ashbringer glows stronger. The warmth of the fire at Hearthglen hits his face, the soft chatter of the Silver Hand, the quiet swell of the river outside of his home, his brother mocking him half-heartedly for his fear of the thunderstorms that usher in the Tirisfal autumn, yet his father’s arms wrapped around him, solid and strong.   
  
A pressure builds under his skin and a twin headache pounds between his eyes. It confounds Darion that he can still have memories this vivid. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the feel of the metal beneath his hands, its magnetic pull refusing to release him.   
  
Suddenly, the smell of petrichor and the smoke of a distant fire assails him, with a gust of wind and the rustling of fallen leaves. Arms around him, holding tight.   
  
“Oh, Darion.”   
  
He stumbles when he opens his eyes, standing not within the crypt at Light’s Hope any longer, but in the clearing outside his home in Tirisfal, the trees high and mighty above them a burning red like wildfire. And his father, tending to his mother’s grave. It must be his birthday.   
  
“I had every hope that I would never see you here,” Alexandros says in between pulling at the weeds that have grown around the base of his mother’s headstone. “There is a shade of you that wanders around here occasionally- an angry, scared little thing that I have tried and failed to coax into the house. It sometimes brings me back to when you turned three, could never get you to settle down and go to sleep.” He turns to look at him, appraising his son with a smile, and stands up with a slight strain more indicative of age than pain. As if he was made of flesh and blood. “It seems the best parts of you remain within the realm of the living.”   
  
Darion stares at him, trying to commit the man to memory -- to rewrite the placeholder in his head and the traumatizing experience of his father in Naxxramas, twisted beyond recognition and spitting his hate as he lay dying a second time. “That can’t possibly be true,” he says.   
  
Alexandros looks at him questioningly, wiping his hands free of dirt on the hem of his shirt. “Are you dead?”   
  
“Is this the afterlife?” Darion asks in turn. His vision swims, taking in all the light and sensation. Even without his armor, his body feels heavier, and much hotter than he’s used to. Looking down, he sees the flushed pale skin on his hands, slightly pink from the cold. He feels the gentle rise and fall of his chest, automatic. Not the afterlife, then. When he looks back up, his father is watching him closely.   
  
“It seems you’re already starting to come upon that answer yourself,” Alexandros says. “In my enthusiasm to create a weapon of unimaginable power, I did just that. Like another sword we know.” He smiles expectantly, like he’s made a joke.   
  
Darion takes in the forest around his childhood home and the river just beyond the slope of the hill. The light falls in between the trees and cuts through them like fire, and he wonders if this place exists in an endless golden hour. It was his favorite time of day, right up until his death -- the comfort in basking in the brilliant precipice of sundown, the moments just before the dark of night falls. He whips around, and Alexandros is still watching him. “Did I save you?” Darion asks. “Or have you been stuck here, this entire time?”   
  
With a touch of concern, Alexandros puts his hands out, like trying to calm him. “I have long since passed, my son,” he says, “but echoes exist in every living thing. You freed me, never forget that, but a small part of me is tied to the Ashbringer, and always will be.”   
  
It’s then that he notices the root of his father’s concern: so out of practice in a living body, Darion Mograine once again wears his heart on his sleeve. He breathes deep to calm the thundering of his heart, clenches his hands to keep them from shaking, but he can feel the prick of tears against the corners of his eyes. “I never heard you again, after I-well, after I turned,” he says, almost a whisper. “Do you- are you aware of who holds this sword?”   
  
“I am.” Alexandros nods. “In the throes of your service to the Arthas, you were unreachable to me, and believe me-” as Darion feels himself start to protest, his father holds up a steady hand- “I know what it’s like, to be in that deep.”   
  
“But you know,” Darion says slowly, “You know what I have done.”   
  
Again, his father nods, seemingly unbothered. “Some of it.”   
  
Darion runs his hands along his face and up through his hair, resting them on the back of his neck and standing there a moment. He doesn’t remember ever feeling the need to be so fidgety in his youth. “I spent most of my time in Northrend, in Icecrown, tending to the forces of the Lich King. Until I returned with my knights to the plaguelands. But, those years are harder to recall.”   
  
“For the best,” his father says.   
  
“But,” Darion continues, “I must have slain thousands, just to sate the bloodlust. Sometimes, we would refuse to indulge in the act of killing as a test of strength, but it consumes you.”   
  
With a heavy sigh, his father says, “It feels like a song that never leaves your thoughts, growing louder and louder. Your skin crawls with it.”   
  
"We eventually put Acherus back in the Eastern Kingdoms, near one stronghold of the Scarlet Crusade,” Darion says, and Alexandros smiles rueful but arrogant, caught between emotions. He seeks out and lowers himself down to sit on a small, dry boulder near his wife’s grave, listening intently. Darion resents the sensation that he’s telling a story around the campfire, but he goes on. “Trust me when I tell you that everything we threw at them, all their living souls that Ashbringer claimed -- they deserved it, every bit of it.”   
  
“Of that I have no doubt,” Alexandros says, perking up. “Judging by their beginnings -- and my own son -- I would not be surprised to learn they made an enemy out of nearly the entire world. And how has that turned out for them?”   
  
Darion can feel his nerves easing back into calmness, this unspoken acceptance from his father, even a shade of him. Of course he would understand ruin. “Poorly,” Darion says, slowly lowering himself to sit on the ground, folding his hands in his lap. “Nearly wiped out.” And not even solely because of him. Darion pinches his expression, dreading a new line of conversation. “Tirion, actually, helped us break free from Arthas soon after, and purified Ashbringer. Did you sense him, as well? He was its wielder for many years.”  
  
“Yes,” his father says, narrowing his eyes in a fit of concentration, “Not anymore.”   
  
“He died fighting the Legion,” Darion says.  
  
Alexandros scoffs, wholly unconcerned with the perils of the living. Darion supposes he can relate to that. “That is the way of evil in the world, my son, you cut off the head and another simply grows in its place. Something takes you eventually.” He makes a flippant gesture. “He fought for so long. Death, to someone like him, may have been a long sought after and well-earned peace.”  
  
Blast a living body -- Darion’s face burns. That may be one secret between him and his father that he will take to his own grave. Instead, his father breaks the awkward silence.  
  
“You have made me so proud, Darion.”  
  
“What-”  
  
“You would have made your mother proud, as well.”  
  
“How can you say that?” Darion asks. It must be a joke. But Alexandros looks at him closely. “The only good thing I have ever done in this life was to save your soul. The rest is… atonement.”  
  
His father laughs. “As though that would not be enough for me, but that’s only the tip of the blade. You’ve done what I was never able to do: break free from the Lich King, and move on to build something new.” He pauses. “Atonement is admirable, by the way.”   
  
Darion stares at him as though he’s grown a second mouth. His body does this new, exciting trick, in which his heart drops to his stomach. “But I didn’t do any of it alone,” he argues.   
  
“Hardly anyone does anything alone, my son,” Alexandros counters. “And this Ebon Blade, of course I know of it. You’ve given a home and a purpose to all those heroes upon whom everyone else had given up -- you have saved many more souls than just my own.”   
  
For a moment, the boy forgets to breathe.   
  
Alexandros peers at him, as though making sure he’s paying attention. “Darion?”  
  
Light’s Hope looms above him against a theater of blood and rotten flesh, illuminated by the dying sun. Ashbringer’s blade is against the bone of his chest, in the space between his ribs. The heat of its corrupted magic burns against his back. The screams of the dying drown out the sound of his quiet prayer as he tightens his grip; his commands, his rain of blood -- they seize him like a lover.  
  
Tirisfal chirps with crickets.  
  
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” Darion says, staring ahead of his father now, gaze lingering over the faded text of his mother’s grave. _Beloved,_ it says. Beloved she must have been, to die for him without fighting it, to see everything he’s become and continue to rest in peace.  
  
Alexandros laughs again, and Darion wishes he could return it as easily. “A genuine tome of experience, I expect. I can tell you this: I held out against the Lich King’s control for a long time, and I did so with the memories of you, and Renault, and your mother.” It’s the first time he says that name, and he does it with measured fondness -- a father choosing to remember only the good in his children, for the moment. “But Kel’Thuzad is a persistent one."

_ Quite the understatement,  _ Darion thinks. A bell tolls in the distance, and he thinks that only Brill would be close enough to their home for its bell to be heard. Even then, he remembers it as a much softer sound, and Brill doesn’t exist here, why would it? Its people are long dead, and not by Ashbringer. Ah - a beat of panic - the other side calls back to him.

Darion looks at his father, unsure of what to say. He wants to be firm and steady, bid farewell with dignity, but here he’s human and vulnerable, and weird, and grasping for wisdom and comfort. “I need to be stronger,” he says. “There’s still so much I don’t know. It seems like I’ve made only mistakes.” He bows his head, but hears the sound of his father standing, the leaves disturbed as he walks to kneel in front of him. A hand clasps his shoulder.

“My son, I never got the chance to teach you a very important lesson: for every good deed in your life, you will face the consequences. And for every mistake, its reward,” he places his hand against his chest, against his heart. “Now go, and claim your reward."

A burst of light pierces his chest, pain overwhelming for but a moment-  
  
His hands leave the blade’s surface, wisps of its aura dragging back with them. Its white hue has dimmed to a brilliant shade of deep gold with black threaded throughout, like the verge from evening to night. He gasps, and puts a silencing hand to his mouth. Blessedly, he no longer inhabits a living body, but his own. An unmoving heart sits in his chest, heavy and grounding. He returns his hand to the blade’s surface, and it is warm.  
  
To his side, the scrape of a hand against the stone wall as Tyrosus descends, and Darion knows what’s coming.  
  
“What have you done?” Tyrosus whispers from the base of the stairs, steadying himself on the wall. “I trusted you, Darion -- _What have you done?_ ” He sounds so wantonly tragic, that all Darion can do in the glow of his newfound resolve is bask in his victory.  
  
Tyrosus cannot break this moment for him -- he’s incapable of it. He looks up at the paladin, undisturbed from this unprecedented sensation of elation, of relief. It crawls up his spine unlike anything else ever has. “Ashbringer has accepted me. My father has accepted me,” he says.  
  
For a few seconds, Tyrosus looks like he wants to keep fighting, but he lowers himself to the ground, sitting on the bottom step with another heavy sigh. “Why does it look like that?” he asks, through his hands that he’s brought up to massage his face.  
  
Darion wonders if he should actually elaborate, if that would do anything for Tyrosus. “Ashbringer becomes what its wielder needs it to be,” he says, cryptically. Tyrosus says nothing, so Darion considers that another small victory.  
  
A brush of ice moves over his hand. He looks down, to the ghostly hand that rests over his own, then looks up to the barest ghost of his father looking back at him. There’s a brief thought, that this may as well happen along with everything else, and then the feeling of a bond materializing, the shade of his father from that pocket dimension tethering himself to Ashbringer’s new wielder. Darion recalls the way it whispered to him after he returned from Naxxramas, twisted and furious -- he was the child stuck at the dinner table with an angry father. This is preferable.  
  
Alexandros then turns to look at Tyrosus, silently. Eerie, but comforting.  
  
“It would appear,” Tyrosus says suddenly, startling Darion, “that there is much I don’t understand about the nature of that weapon.” If he notices the shade, he makes no indication -- just a quiet concession from an old man.  
  
Darion says nothing, but considers the phrase, _you have no idea.  
  
_“You weren’t even so much as a budding paladin, back when you were alive.” Time has made this man into someone who wields little jabs easily.  
  
“I was enough of one to be Kel’Thuzad’s favorite student, for a time,” Darion says, much more bitter than he intends to be. The ghost of his father’s hand pats him, as though to calm him. “This is the sword that killed me, Maxwell, what do you want me to say, that it was never bound to me? You were _there._ ”  
  
Darion stands and faces him, taking Ashbringer in hand and banishing the shade of his father back to the shadows. He doesn’t know what he wants, except perhaps for the paladin to look him in the face.  
  
A long silence follows. He doesn’t. “You should leave,” Tyrosus says, “before someone notices its absence from the hall.” He knocks his gauntlet on the wall, loudly, and another pair of steps comes from the stairwell. A moment later, a woman appears in mage’s robes. When Darion looks at them, Tyrosus just shrugs. “You will leave by portal, to the outskirts, and the spell will be lifted. From there, do what you like.”  
  
“What will you tell them?” Darion asks.  
  
“The truth,” Tyrosus says.   
  
Fair enough. Darion would have rather channeled himself directly into the realm of shadows, into Salanar’s confidence, and lie low for a while. Portals make him sick, but he’s not in a position to bargain with his means of departure. He will reach a little farther however, after suffering a hundred slights. “I have another favor to ask,” he says.   
  
“Ask it.”  
  
“Allow my knights to pass through these lands peacefully -- they have work to do here.” It’s not a hard sell -- both the Alliance and the Horde have largely reconciled with their respective death knights, those who wanted to rejoin the living. Errant and non-hostile knights come and go as well, but no one knows the difference anyway. To bar access to the Plaguelands from an entire order injudiciously would hardly gain them any sympathy from the crown or council.  
  
Sending away the only knights truly capable of stomaching every manner of disease and gruesome horror that self-replicates on a daily basis in these lands would be somewhat like shooting an arrow into their own foot, but Darion keeps that to himself. “I would not return,” he says. _Unless absolutely necessary,_ which he also keeps to himself.   
  
The paladin ruminates over the request, eye searching the statue just over Darion’s shoulder. “You may want to avoid all of the land above Arathi, if I were to be completely honest,” he says quietly, wrapping a hand around the hilt of his own sword at his hip, grounding. “But your knights, should they behave themselves, will be allowed to move as they please without trouble.”  
  
An acid rises up in him, satisfied but resentful. He wants to claim one of the last words this time. “You deify those of you who died in service to the Light, but not those who have fallen from it, but we are no less worthy,” Darion says, and Tyrosus looks him in the eye, indescribable.  
  
Above them, a distant commotion begins -- raised voices, frantic, like a call to arms, Darion would know it anywhere. Tyrosus and the mage look over their shoulder to the encroaching footsteps, the agitated voices of knights in search of him. “Conjure the portal, now.”  
  
The mage brings her hands together, arcane magic alight and ribboned together as though she were knitting a scarf. It bleeds from her hands, drifting to the space behind Darion’s back, cold as ice.   
  
“Darion, you have to leave,” Tyrosus says once again. “I…” Whatever he wanted to say, he let’s hang as voices draw nearer to the crypt.  
  
A voice rages down to them. “ _My Lord-_ ” and however they knew Tyrosus was down in the crypt, even he obviously was displeased- “ _Scourge at the gates! They’re assaulting the chapel grounds!”_ The bell above the chapel thunders a warning. Mere seconds have passed since the uproar on the topside began, and it has reached a fever pitch. At the mention of Scourge, Darion feels an echo of the heart drop from before, a defensive energy taking over.  
  
Tyrosus looks back at him, his expression torn between fear and fury. The portal bursts to life behind him, a gust of magical energy against his back.  
  
Darion preempts his accusation and brings Ashbringer to his chest, holding it close. “I would never- I would not again ever-” and he chokes on the words, the rupture of his link to Fordragon - he would know it like he would know his own heartbeat - tears through him like a strike of lightning. Bare-faced to his enemies, tears well up in his eyes and the pain of severance blurs his vision -- the only thing keeping him moored to this realm, perhaps keeping him from a feral breakdown, is his grip on Ashbringer. The consecration of the land under his feet starts to burn.  
  
“Go,” Tyrosus snaps, pulling his own blade out from its sheath, ascending the stairs. He doesn’t look back. The mage brings her hands up in front of her chest, staring at Darion with not a hint of remorse at all.  
  
Darion sees the spell gathering, feels the air electrified with it. Instinctually, he tries to throw up a shield to block it, and fails.   
  
A great push of arcane energy sends him through the portal, and before he’s hit the ground on the other side, it blinks out of existence. The aftershocks of that mental assault rattle through him. It's a sensation he's only felt once before, years ago now. He holds Ashbringer against his chest, his fingers finding the groove of its runes, as he pulls himself together. To cast a spell right now would be like trying to move a mountain -- his thoughts are a tessellation of scattered memories, and the strong desire to go home.  
  
The suppression spell is lifted in an instant, and a death gate opens underneath him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always appreciated! see you next time!


End file.
